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Easy & Impressive Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Meat and two veg are the stars of this easy roast chicken dinner perfect for a Mother's Day meal! You'll be sure to impress with expertly cooked juicy chicken, beautiful seasonal veg and homemade gravy.

Yield at least 3 servings

Easy & Impressive Mother's Day Roast Chicken Dinner

UK Mother's Day is this coming Sunday and roast dinners are a big part
of the UK's culinary culture, but instead of going out this Sunday and
flashing the cash, stay in! Put on your chef's hat and treat mom to this
truly easy and completely impressive roast chicken dinner.

This is the ultimate roast chicken dinner: it's impressive and it's easy for even the most novice of cooks to make. Earlier this week, I shared my recipe for Lavender & Rose French Macarons and mentioned that they'd be the perfect Mother's Day dessert. Well this juicy chicken, those crispy and fluffy hasselback potatoes and these vibrant spring vegetables would be a truly wonderful combination to serve before whipping out a tray of your tasty homemade macarons.

One of the trickiest things to get right with big roast meals is the timings, but don't worry, I'll help you with that. I think our favorite part of this meal was the juicy chicken with my homemade gravy. Don't be intimidated by this recipe: the chicken gets put in the oven first and the potatoes go in about 40 minutes after. You make the gravy and the vegetables at the last minute while the chicken rests and serve it all up with a big smile while mom puts her feet up. Perfection!

Can't get enough chicken? Be sure to check out this board and get your fill:

Instructions:

Lay the chicken on its breast in a roasting tin. Add the bay leaves, carrots, halved shallots and Herbs de Provance to the pan, around the chicken.

Brush the back of the chicken (which is now the exposed side) with half of the melted butter and sprinkle with a bit of the chargrilled seasoning. Save the remaining butter.

Here's what the chicken should look like:

Pour 225ml of water around the chicken and onto the vegetables and herbs.

Loosely cover the chicken with foil and roast in the oven for 40 minutes.

After 40 minutes, remove the chicken. It should look similar to this:

Gently turn the chicken over so that its breasts are now facing up. Be careful not to pierce the chicken's skin or all the juices will escape and your chicken will be extremely dry.

Brush the remaining butter over the chicken breasts and legs and any bit that has not been buttered.

Scatter with more chargrilled seasoning and return the chicken, uncovered, to the oven for an hour or until the chicken is cooked through.

Halfway through the chicken's first 40 minutes in the oven, prepare the potatoes.

Place each scrubbed potato into the well of a wooden spoon and slice cuts across the width of the potatoes from end to end. Be sure not to cut completely through the potato. If you bring the knife down until it meets the spoon, you shouldn't have any problem.

Massage each potato with grapeseed oil, allowing some to naturally fall between the potato folds, but taking care not to pry any of the folds apart. If sliced thinly enough, the potato will fan out during cooking.

Place the potatoes on a baking tray and bake with the last hour of the chicken. Sprinkle liberally with salt when they have finished roasting and are still hot.

Once the chicken has finished cooking, remove it from the oven and leave it to rest in the roasting pan for five minutes. Then remove just the chicken onto a serving tray and cover with foil to keep warm.

Chicken drippings, the herbs and vegetables will be left in the bottom of the roasting dish.

Remove the vegetables, but do not throw away. Place them in a labeled zipseal bag and store in the fridge for making homemade stock.

Pour the liquid drippings and fat into a measuring jug and allow the fat and drippings to naturally separate.

Leave the jug for a few minutes until the fat solidifies and can be easily scooped away from the darker, "gravy making goodness" and thrown away.

Add up to 250ml of water to the gravy making goodness and place in a small saucepan.

Mix the cornflour with a tablespoon of water until a paste forms. Add this to the pan as well and allow the gravy to thicken on the stove.

Melt the butter for the vegetables in a large frying pan. Add the spring onions and leeks and cook about three minutes until just starting to soften.

Add the carrots and green beans, season with salt and pepper and saute an additional five minutes until the carrots and the green beans are just cooked but with a slight crunch.

Serve the vegetables with slices of chicken and chicken pieces. Save all the bones from the chicken and place in a zipseal bag either in the fridge or the freezer for making homemade chicken stock.

Hi Anyonita - Oh, this looks like a fabulous dinner! I forget about Hasselback potatoes - they are so good, and I need to remember to make them. Thanks so much for sharing with the Let's Get Real party. I am pinning your post to our group board.

What a great idea using the wooden spoon as a guide for slicing the potatoes. :) As for the chicken, this sounds delicious! I'm only mentioning this because I did it so recently, but if you haven't done this before, you should try some sort of Chinese Five Spice the next time you roast a chicken. Sooooooo good! I tried that for the first time on my last roast - mixed with some butter and orange juice/zest. I have to remember to use shallots this way sometime too! I always quarter onions with a roaster, but the shallots would make for a nice change. :) [#TastyTuesdays]

Amazing recipes and I suspect there will be some very lucky moms out there for Mother's Day! Thanks for sharing at Do Tell Tuesday, and I hope you have a chance to link up again this week! http://www.vintagezest.com/2014/04/do-tell-tuesday-18-cohost-features.html

I'm going to try this tonight. I pulled some chickens out of the freezer this morning, and went on a search for a recipe. My roasted chickens are getting boring. They are not as brown as I would like or flavorful on the bottom. I'm excited about trying it. Thanks.

Meet Anyonita

Anyonita Nibbles was established in 2010. I’m Anyonita (ann-yo-need-uh), an American expat living in Manchester, the best city in the UK! Since I am coeliac, Anyonita Nibbles focuses on flavourful, gluten-free food. I’m a wife and a mommy & I have an obsession with patisserie.
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